How is your mouse wheel holding up? If it’s sticking or just not working as responsively as when you first got it, that’s actually quite common. I think most of us will agree that Logitech makes quality wireless mice, but it isn’t immune to mouse wheel problems. Luckily, most of them can be solved by simply cleaning out the mouse wheel chamber, and this will show you how to do that for most Logitech mouse models.

Fix Sticky Scroll Wheel Logitech Mouse

What you’ll need

So, you have the mouse and it’s ready for maintenance. In order to do any work on it, we will first have to separate the top shell from the bottom. The bottom cases all of the tech components as well as the batteries and optical or laser sensor. Flip the mouse so it is upside and get ready to work.

The first thing you’ll need to do is to turn off the Mouse and pull out the batteries.

Next, we need to expose all of the screw holes. Most Logitech models have 3 or 4 screw holes. These are located underneath the larger surface pads, so you’ll have to remove them. I find the easiest way to do this is by prying them with a butter knife or a flat screwdriver. Just do it slowly and they won’t be damaged. Additionally, you may need to remove a battery sticker to expose a screw hiding in the battery bay.

Important Tip

If you remove the surface pads and battery sticker carefully you can reuse them. The underside has an adhesive, so try not to let it touch anything except for the part of the mouse it is supposed to attach to.

Unscrew all of the screws and the top shell should separate from the bottom of the mouse. Don’t force it apart! It should be extremely easy to separate if you feel any resistance at all it is likely because you missed a screw.

Important: be very careful opening the mouse as there is a cable connecting the top to the bottom, and if you break this your mouse won’t work anymore.

Once you have the mouse open, there will be one long cable that connects the top to the bottom. This cable can be unplugged to make things easier. On the bottom half of the mouse, the connection port is easy to access. Make a mental note of which side is which, because it will need to be reinserted facing the same way. In the case of my mouse, the red line is facing outwards away from the center of the device.

Gently pull on the cord to remove it. Close to its end, there should be hard plastic reinforcement to make pulling it out safer.

Now you’ll have unhindered access to the bottom components of the mouse. This is where you grab a Q-tip or piece of stock paper and do some cleaning. Just insert it around the sides and scrape out as much as you possibly can. Compressed air can also come in handy. If you’ve had your mouse for a year or longer then chances are a lot of dust, lint and fuzz are going to come out of the mouse wheel chamber as you clean it.

Note – It’s possible to completely remove the mouse wheel from the chamber and give it a thorough cleaning. However, in precision and performance models this can be very complicated as there are springs and other mechanisms that are easy to mess up.

Once it is cleaned all you have to do is reassemble the mouse in the reverse order.

Attach the long cable from the top to the bottom.

Put the mouse together and reinsert all of the screws.

Test the mouse wheel to make sure it works.

If it works, place the surface pads back over the screw holes, re-insert batteries. Done!

If it doesn’t work, try cleaning out the mouse wheel chamber some more.

I hope this helps anyone who has issues with an unresponsive mouse wheel. I’ve had my Logitech MX1100 Pro for about three years now and it recently started acting up. After going through this process I found that it had an entire ball of lint gathered up beneath the wheel in the mouse chamber. Now with the lint removed, the mouse is working just as it did the day I opened it out of the retail box.

If this were a wired mouse, I wouldn’t go through all the trouble, but a wireless mouse isn’t as cheap and disposable. I’d love to hear feedback from anyone who tries this or has already done something similar to fix mouse wheel issues on any brand of mouse.

17 Comments

17 Comments

Sabz

Thank you this helped a lot.
I had a grating noise issue comming from my wheel in free mode, on my 4 year old MX1100.
I followed your tutorial, cleaned the wheel with a stock paper and now the noise is gone.
The wheel is now running perfecty smoothy, without any annoying noise.
You saved me from buying a brand new 70€ logitech mouse. Tanks again.

My Logitech is a totally different model but based on your excellent post I went for it and now it works better than ever. The wheel totally locked up in forward roll. My only option (other than using the hated finger pad on my old Mac iBook G4) was to buy another one at WalMart. On a hunch, before tossing the older mouse I did a quick search on malfunctioning mice, found your post, and decided to tear into it. After all, I was going to toss it anyway. Mine was a smaller one, held together with only one screw in the battery cavity. I removed the screw and slid the bottom case forward, disengaging two prongs holding the front together. as you said, the wheel was gunked up with miniature dust-bunnies, lint, skin grease, and just about everything but dead bees. But the real culprit was a tiny friction spring prong that had somehow gotten under the rim of the pliable “tire” on the solid plastic wheel hub, keeping the wheel from turning forward. With tweezers I pulled the wheel tension (by friction) wire end from between the hub and its outer covering and let it ride against the outer backside surface, allowing the wheel to rotate while keeping it from spinning freely. I replaced everything in reverse order, unplugged the new mouse receiver freom the
USB port, stuck the old one back in and it works like a charm. Now I have a spare. Thanks for giving me the courage to go into it and do the obvious. BTW, On my mouse there is no electrical wire to disconnect. All the electronics are built into the upper part of the clamshell (the lower part when on its back for disassembly). The wheel assembly and battery compartment are the only things built into the base holding thewheel. Only one small Phillips head screw holds the upper and lower clamshells together.

I have different Logitech mouse, but Even with the RUST on one side of my WHEEL , after cleaning, it spins just like she waaas brand new!

Brand new condition was where it could do the largest static webpage or document drilling straight in is just insane it goes and goes and goes either to the top or bottom scrolling with one flick of the wheel. (Sorry that isn’t a scientific explanation but those with the mouse will know exactly what I mean)

Probably not required but I used a little 91% alcohol where goo was stubborn, and paper towels instead of q-tip. I also had compressed air. Things were not looking good until the compressed air and boom she came back from the dead after puking out a couple green lint balls.

I mostly concentrated on getting the hair like filaments out and stop sticking to sides of wheel

I can’t imagine working in a PET SHOP!!! ;o)

Don’t forget the cylinder that hits the laser optics for filaments/hairs.

Tryed to fix My MX1100 wheel problem by this manual, everything went smoothly, I cleaned mouse wheel mechanism with compressed air and contact cleaner spray. After puting everything together wheel was working fine. But half of a day later red light started to flash on mouse and mouse stopped working, pointer is not moving anymore:(
Battery replacement doesn’t help. Any suggestions?

Thank you for this tutorial, it really helped me. Thanks for taking the time to write it up, with pictures.

My mouse wheel was actually stuck in the free-scrolling mode (without the clicks), since one of the pieces got loose when the mouse fell on the floor. Although this tutorial didn’t address the problem directly, it helped me figure it out and fix it.

I found that my wheel was extremely free-wheeling in that it would wander to another position after taking my finger off the wheel. Sometimes backward or sometimes would continue forward.
What I did was about as low-tech as it could be. On the right click side of the wheel it seems free of equipment so I took lightly waxed dental floss, taped it to the wheel with a tiny piece of tape, gave it three revolutions of the wheel, tied it off and the floss gives the wheel enough resistance to keep it from free-wheeling. Simple fix but it works.

Thanks for the write up. I have a Logitech M510. Took it apart and found that the rubber that covers the wheels was coming unglued in certain spots and thus was rubbing when that area got to the bottom. Had to replace. Posting just in case others have the M510 and cleaning it doesn’t help.

These mice aren’t rocket science. The two I worked on were easy fixes, mostly by removing accumulated lint and body grease from the wheels. Sometimes there will be a tiny tensioning spring off-track interfering with the wheel rotation. The problems are largely mechanical and obvious when you get access to the guts. The makers also love to hide screws under labels and the little foot pads. You can either re-glue the pads back on or just leave them off, which I do. The mouse might even work better with closer contact to the surface it slides on.
.